This invention is in the field of needlepoint devices and techniques and particularly in the field of needlepoint canvas forms in which the yarn is stitched according to designated design patterns. Traditionally and for a great many years needlepoint has been practiced on flat meshes called canvases which are woven on a loom or made of plastic and define a matrix of horizontal lines crossed by vertical lines. The design pattern to be followed by the user is either imprinted directly onto the canvas or is shown on a separate drawing which can be visually transferred by the user as each stitch is made with selected colors of yarn.
A significant development in the needlepoint industry was the introduction of three-dimensional needlepoint objects formed by attaching together individual pieces of flat canvas each of which has its own design requirements. A simple example of such three-dimensional articles would obviously be a cube formed by five or six flat square sections of canvas joined along their adjacent edges. It was discovered that animate objects could also be made by careful selection of the component portions of flat canvas, one example being a frog designed by the inventor of the present invention, and obviously numerous abstract forms could be and were readily conceived in this manner.
The traditional flat canvases and the constructions of portions of flat canvas have the obvious and very significant limitation of not coming even close to any of the curved forms found everywhere in the world including human and animal shapes and the millions of constructions defining symmetrical curves and miscellaneous free forms. The present invention provides a curved canvas form having shape so selected that with the single form a vast variety of results are easily possible for both experienced needlepointers and novices.